periphery to core. However, some goods and services flow from core to periphery, and
of course states within a zone trade with each other. There are innumerable currents,
eddies, undertows, and whirlpools in the economic sea.
Global Mobility
Just as people can move up and down the socioeconomic ladder from generation to
generation, and even within a single generation, rich countries can become poor, and
poor countries can become rich. Great Britain, the richest country in the world a cen-
tury ago, today ranks number 19 in per capita GDP (not exactly poor, but moving
toward middle income). The United Arab Emirates, impoverished
peripheral sheikdoms before the discovery of oil, now rank higher than
New Zealand (core). A generation ago, the Soviet Union was an
economic and political superpower. But the collapse of communism
and the move to a capitalist economy had a devastating impact. In
2004, 25 percent of the population of Russia lived below poverty level,
and its per capita GDP ranked below its former satellite states, Poland,
Slovakia, Slovenia, and the Czech Republic, just a little above
Botswana. Times change, economies change, the world system changes.
Recently there has been a trend of newly industrializing economies
(NIEs), countries that move from poor to rich in a matter of a few
years. Japan was the first, beginning in the 1950s, and now most of
East Asia and Southeast Asia have moved up to middle income, and
Hong Kong, Japan, South Korea, Singapore, and Taiwan have moved
up to high income (Brohman, 1996). Several of these have risen not
because of valuable raw materials but because these former colonial
trading centers easily adapted to become large-scale manufacturing and
global financial centers.
GLOBAL INEQUALITY 237Prostitution and the World
SystemIn the world system, it is not only goods and services
that flow from periphery to core. People do, too, in
the form of slaves, foreign workers, and prostitutes
(or sex workers). Interviews with sex workers in
dozens of countries around the world reveal that in
Japan (core), they tend to come from Korea (semiperiphery) or
the Philippines (periphery). In Thailand (semiperiphery), they
tend to come from Vietnam or Burma (periphery). In France
(core), they tend to come from Turkey or North Africa (semi-
periphery). In Germany, they tend to come from Bosnia,
Slovenia, or the Czech Republic (semiperiphery). However, in the
Czech Republic, they tend to come from Poland, Slovakia, and
Hungary (semiperiphery).Why does a country in the semiperiphery draw sex workers
from the semiperiphery? Perhaps the answer lies in relative
wealth: The average GDP per capita in the Czech Republic is
$15,700, compared to $13,900 in Hungary, $13,300 in Slova-
kia, and $11,000 in Poland. Or perhaps it lies in the mechanics
of global sex tourism, in which people (mostly men) from the
core take vacations in periphery or semiperiphery states with
the intention of having sex, either with prostitutes or with im-
poverished local “friends” willing to spend the night in exchange
for dinner or gifts. Prostitution in the Czech Republic really
means Prague, about 2 hours by train from Dresden and 4 hours
from Munich, a perfect distance for German businessmen to get
away for a weekend sex holiday (Kempadoo, Saghera, and
Pattanaik, 2005).Sociologyand ourWorld
Depending on where you work, wages
will vary enormously. For example, if we
compare the hourly wages for various
white-collar positions in India and the
United States, we can also see the incentive
to “outsource” these jobs:
Financial analyst: $33–34 U.S., $6–15
India
Payroll clerk: $15 U.S., $2 India
Programmer: $29 U.S., $3–6 India
Telephone operator: $13 U.S., $1 India
Source:U.S. Department of Labor, Fisher Center
for Real Estate and Urban EconomicsDidyouknow
?